Apache Syncope is an Open Source system for managing digital identities in enterprise environments, implemented in Java EE technology and released under Apache 2.0 license.

Identity management (or IdM) means to manage user data on systems and applications, using the combination of business processes and IT. IdM involves considering user attributes, roles, resources and entitlements in trying to answer the following thorny question:

Who has access to What, When, How, and Why?

What is Identity Management, anyway?

Account

Computers work with records of data about people. Such records contain technical information needed by the system for which the account is created and managed.

(Digital) Identity

A representation of a set of claims made by one digital subject about itself. It’s you!

Have you ever been hired by a company, entered an organization or just created a new Google account? Companies, organizations and cloud entities work with applications that need your data to function properly: username, password, e-mail, first name, surname, and more.

Where is this information going to come from? And what happens when you need to be enabled for more applications? And what if you get promoted and acquire more rights on the applications you already had access to? Most importantly, what happens when you quit or they gently let you go?

In brief, Identity Management takes care of managing identity data throughout what is called the Identity Lifecycle.

Identity lifecycle